5 Needed Improvements in Windows 7

Earlier, we discussed 5 compelling reasons to upgrade to Windows 7. Windows 7 is a big step up from Windows Vista, with several compelling features, but it isn’t perfect. While there are no deal breakers, there are a few spots where Windows 7 could use some improvement. Here are a few of them. I’m sure there are more, so let us know in the comments if you have any ideas for how to improve Windows 7 (and no, "get a Mac" doesn’t count).

While I love Aero Snap, it isn’t perfect. For one, you can’t use your mouse to snap a window to the common edge of dual screen monitors (i.e., to the right side of the left monitor, or the left side of the right monitor). You can use the Windows key, plus the left or right arrow, to achieve this snap, but better mouse support would be nice.

2. The ability to move the start button’s location on the taskbar

The taskbar is highly customizable. I’m currently experimenting with the taskbar on the left side of my main monitor. Doing so, though, has placed the start button at the very top left of my monitor. Perhaps I’ll get accustomed to it, but I’d prefer this button to be at the bottom, below all of my program icons on the taskbar.

3. Firefox tab integration

It would be nice if Aero Peek would display all open Firefox tabs. Instead, it will only display the focused tab in each Firefox window. Internet Explorer does show all tabs in Aero Peek, so I suspect this is a job for the Mozilla team, not Microsoft. Update: It looks like this functionality is coming soon, as it is in the Firefox 3.6 Beta. Update #2: There are some reports now that this may have been removed from the Beta due to some bugs.

4. Better backup options

Windows 7’s backup features are very basic. You can select which directories to back up, and select ONE backup destination. This has forced me to stick with SyncBackSE, a commerical product, as I want my documents to backup to one drive, but my video to backup to another.

5. More easily pin folders to the taskbar

Pinning folders to the taskbar is a multistep process in Windows 7. We’ll have an article here soon on how to do this, but suffice it to say that this would be much easier if folders could be added the same way that program icons are added – by right-clicking a folder and selecting "pin to taskbar." It also would be nice to be able to nest programs into folders on the taskbar as well. For example, I have three icons for one game I play, for different aspects of the game. I’d like to be able to more easily put those into a folder on the taskbar.

These are just a few suggestions for how to improve Windows 7. Do you have any suggestions?

Yep, that would be nice. The other thing with the backup i found is that it didn’t seem that I could just image my C drive. It was trying to force me to image my E drive as well. I suspect that is because I had moved my user folder to the E drive.